South Korea shopping centre stabbing leaves 8 injured

A 59-year-old man stabbed at least eight people on Tuesday at a shopping centre in the South Korean city of Incheon, police and fire officials said. One victim was in life-threatening condition and received surgery at a nearby hospital.

The suspect attacked shoppers as he moved through the shopping centre before business owners and bystanders subdued him, according to local police and witnesses.

The man has a history of violent offences and mental illness and was required to wear an electronic monitoring anklet, according to South Korea’s Justice Ministry. The man’s name was not released, in keeping with South Korean practice for most criminal suspects.

Witnesses told South Korean media that the attacker appeared to have knives tied to both hands and stabbed people in different parts of the shopping centre while moving up and down the floors on an escalator.

Nah Hyun-joon, who helped subdue the attacker using chairs with several other people, said he saw the man attack about four people in the second-floor food court before moving up to the third floor, where he stabbed at least one woman.

Nah said the attacker then headed towards a cinema on the fourth floor but was blocked by several people holding chairs at the top of the escalator. Nah said he and others trapped the man from below and eventually subdued him near the escalator’s third-floor entrance, pushing him down with chairs and removing his knives, before police arrived.

“He just went around stabbing people,” Nah told local television. “He didn’t even say anything. He just stabbed whoever he saw.”

The injured were taken to nearby hospitals, including one woman in her twenties who underwent surgery after arriving in cardiac arrest, Incheon’s fire department said. The department did not provide details on the severity of the other injuries.

The suspect was sentenced to four years in prison for attempted murder in 2015, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. He was placed under electronic monitoring in 2019 and had committed no repeat offences while under supervision, the Justice Ministry said.

The suspect was booked last month on suspicion of carrying a weapon after using a kitchen knife to puncture a protest sign outside a hospital where he had a dispute, and was receiving treatment for alcohol dependence and unspecified mental illnesses, according to the ministry.

Earlier on the day of the attack, the suspect attended a counselling session from 10 to 11am and then met his probation officer from 11.20am to 11.55am, the ministry said. The attack began at 1.40pm.

The officer confirmed that the suspect had taken his medication and had lunch with him until 12.30pm. Authorities detected no attempts to destroy his monitoring device, the ministry said.

“We sincerely apologise over the great public concern caused by the knife attack by an individual under electronic monitoring,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that it would review both the supervision of the suspect and broader electronic monitoring procedures.